Quality in Services

Service quality is referred to a valuation of how good a delivered service meets the customer’s expectation. Upper management

The Gaps Model of Service Quality was originally developed for application in the financial service sector. The model was

Brandy and Cronin (2001) introduced their own dimensions of service quality which are 1.) service environment, 2.) customer-employee interaction, and 3.) service outcome. These dimensions are considered the sources of quality of a service. Different dimensions of service quality have been introduced and accepted in past researches and studies but the 5 dimensions of Zeithaml et al., (1988) were proved to be the most reliable and credible. One of the most important strategies service providers can use to position themselves effectively in a competitive environment, and to distinguish themselves from competitors, is to provide and improve service quality to ensure the customer satisfaction (Cronin & Taylor,

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a complete and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to make better the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in answer to continuous feedback. The importance and value of TQM was stressed by European Foundation of Quality Management to reach total customer satisfaction. TQM necessities may be defined separately for a organization or may be in adherence to established standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 series. Total Quality Management can define aims for the continuous improvement in all levels and functions of the organization. The continuous improvement suggests that quality management system should be a circle.

Employees must first align their perceptions of service quality to what the customer’s perceptions are (Becker & Wellins 1990). Understanding what drives the customer establishment relationship is important to turning one time customers into loyal

Carman, J. M. (1990). Consumer perceptions of service quality: An assessment of the SERVQUAL dimensions. Journal of Retailing, 66 (1), 33-55.

This chapter discusses literature review of theories and models and conceptual framework which is evidence of the study variables - Quality of service and customer satisfaction. The definition of Service, quality, customer satisfaction, the concept of quality of service, and the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction is briefly discussed.

Hung, Y. H., Huang, M. L., & Chen, K. S. (2003). Service quality evaluation by service quality performance matrix. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence.

The key to ensuring good quality service is meeting or exceeding what the customers expect from services. Judgements of high and low quality depend on how customers the actual service performance in the context of what they expected. Service quality, as perceived by the customers, can be defined as the extent of discrepancy but customers’ expectations or desires and their

Source : Adapted from A. Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry, “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall 1985)

Quality is an “order qualifier” in most of the cases, due to the type of application of our product. For some customers the application of our product requires higher standards and then quality becomes a “order winner”.

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

Within any given industry, a level of quality has to be ascertained as to ensure that clients of products and goods were receiving the best possible level of quality for their desired product. Quality meant that the expectations of a client had to be met consistently. Business throughout the world started development of standards and

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these